DISCIPLINE QUOTAS: THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S EVIL LIVES ON

by John Hinderaker at PowerLine:

In 2014, the Obama administration promulgated a “guidance” to America’s public schools that threatened federal investigations and litigation against schools where black students are disciplined (e.g., by suspension) more often, on a pro rata basis, than white students, on the ground that such numerical discrepancy is evidence of discrimination. Many schools responded by adopting discipline quotas, which meant in practice that after a certain number of students of a particular race had been suspended, teachers and administrators were helpless to enforce any kind of discipline in classrooms.

The Obama administration is gone, thankfully, but its “guidance” has not been revoked. Meanwhile, state governments and federal courts that are in liberal hands have taken up the claim that disparate incidence of discipline must be discriminatory, a theory that flies in the face of common observation that misbehavior in school is not randomly distributed in the student population.

In Minnesota, the Department of Human Rights has reportedly sent letters to 43 school districts and charter schools, telling them that they are under investigation because of racial disparities in discipline. There is an added Orwellian element in that news of the letters has leaked out, but no one knows what 43 school districts have gotten the letters, or what the letters say. Under Minnesota law, it apparently is difficult if not impossible for the public to get that information. So the far-left administration of trust fund billionaire Mark Dayton is able to bully school districts in the shadows, without public knowledge or recourse.

Brace yourself, parents of Minnesota. Here’s what’s coming soon to a school near you: increased violence, brazen challenges to teachers’ authority and a chaotic environment where learning is an uphill battle. Teachers who try to exert control will find their hands tied, and some kids — no longer accountable for their behavior — will feel free to provoke mischief and mayhem.

If this happens at your school, you’ll be able to thank the Minnesota Department of Human Rights (MDHR). In fall 2017, the department sent letters to 43 school districts and charter schools across the state, announcing that the schools are under investigation because their student discipline records suggest that black and Native American students are disciplined at a rate that exceeds their proportion of the student population.
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Here, in essence, is MDHR’s position: The primary cause of racial discipline gaps in schools is racist teachers and discipline policies, not differing rates of student misconduct. Schools must move to end these statistical group disparities. If administrators don’t agree to change their practices in ways that reduce black and Native American discipline rates, according to MinnPost, “[Human Rights Commissioner Kevin] Lindsey says the state will initiate litigation.”

We’ve seen this movie before, most recently in the St. Paul Public Schools. There, it had devastating consequences for students of all backgrounds. MDHR bureaucrats must have been the only people in St. Paul who weren’t paying attention to this debacle.

In St. Paul schools — as virtually everywhere in the country — black students, as a group, are referred for discipline at higher rates than other students. Starting around 2012, the district’s leaders tried to narrow this gap by lowering behavior expectations and removing meaningful penalties for student misconduct. For example, they spent millions of dollars on “white privilege” training for teachers, and dropped “continual willful disobedience” as a suspendable offense.

Violence and disorder quickly escalated. In some schools, anarchic conditions made learning difficult, if not impossible, according to teachers. In December 2015, after a vicious attack by a student left a high school teacher with a traumatic brain injury, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi labeled the trend of violence a “public health crisis,” according to news accounts.

By that time, suspensions — which had initially fallen — had surged to their highest rate in five years. Black students, about 30 percent of the student body, were 77 percent of those suspended. The St. Paul teachers’ union threatened to strike over safety concerns, and families who valued education began flooding out of St. Paul schools. In June 2016, the school board voted out the superintendent.

Today, MDHR seems intent on duplicating this failed social experiment throughout Minnesota.

It’s a funny thing about liberals–they are undaunted by failure. It’s almost as though they don’t really care whether their policies work or not.

Kathy talks about the fact that the Minnesota Department of Human Rights’ power grab is being carried out in secrecy, and continues:

The fact is, public scrutiny is vital here, to expose the three deeply flawed premises on which MDHR’s race-focused discipline campaign is based.

The department’s first faulty premise is that teachers, not students, are to blame for the racial discipline gap. MDHR bureaucrats’ key (if unspoken) assumption is that students with widely different socioeconomic and family backgrounds — as groups — all misbehave in school at the same rate. Relying on this premise, the department attributes any significant group disparities to discriminatory teachers and discipline practices, by default.

But consider this: Nationally, white boys are suspended at more than twice the rate of Asian and Pacific Islander boys, while boys in general are suspended much more often than girls.

Is this because teachers are biased against white students and boys? Or does it reflect real differences in conduct?

Liberals who claim that disparate discipline rates must be evidence of racist teachers never want to talk about the fact that Asian students are suspended much less often than whites.

There are, in fact, real differences in group behavior. For example, nationally, young black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at 10 times the rate of whites and Hispanics of the same age. Behaviors that lead to criminal conduct are also likely to produce school misconduct. Tragically, black students’ discipline rate is most likely higher than other students’ because, on average, they misbehave more.

A groundbreaking 2014 study by J.P. Wright and colleagues in the Journal of Criminal Justice appears to confirm this. Using the largest sample of school-aged children in the nation, the authors found that teacher bias plays no role in the racial discipline gap, which is “completely accounted for by a measure of the prior problem behavior of the student.”

What accounts for group differences in behavior? A primary factor appears to be profound demographic differences in family structure. Nationally, about 72 percent of African-American and 66 percent of Native American children are born out of wedlock, as opposed to 29 percent and 17 percent of white and Asian children, respectively. Young people who grow up without fathers are far more likely than their peers to engage in antisocial behavior, as voluminous research makes clear.

These facts are well known, apparently to everyone except the Obama Department of Education and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights.

MDHR’s second flawed premise is that black students’ higher suspension rates give rise to a “school to prison pipeline,” which reduces their chances for future success. Lindsey told MinnPost that kids who miss school because of suspensions aren’t as likely as others to learn or graduate, and so are more likely to land in prison.

But the problem of missed school days goes far beyond days missed for suspensions. Chronic absenteeism, defined in Minnesota as missing more than 10 percent of school days, is linked with poverty and home conditions. In 2015-16, 37 percent of Native American and 21 percent of black students were chronically absent, compared with 11 percent and 8 percent of white and Asian students, respectively.

The whole “school to prison pipeline” myth is disingenuous. It shouldn’t be surprising that teenagers who bring weapons to school, get into fights, assault teachers, are chronically disobedient and disruptive, take drugs on school property, and so on, are disproportionately likely to commit crimes that land them in prison. Only a liberal could be surprised at this correlation.

MDHR’s third flawed premise is that discipline policies that focus more on race than on a student’s actual conduct somehow benefit poor and minority children.

In fact, the greatest victims of such policies are the children — many poor and minority — who come to school ready to learn. The classroom disorder these policies promote can add insurmountable obstacles to their quest for a decent education.

There is more to Kathy’s column, which you can read here. As you know, if you are a regular Power Line reader, I am now President of Center of the American Experiment, Minnesota’s pre-eminent conservative voice. If you would like to support the work of policy analysts like Katherine Kersten, and help us to reform a backward blue state, you can go here to donate. All contributions are appreciated!

“Transgender Wrestler” Booed After Winning Another Girls’ Tournament

by Jazz Shaw at HotAir:

Those of you who have been following our coverage here over the past year or more are probably already familiar with Mack Beggs, the female high school wrestler who “identifies” as a male but has been wrestling in the girls’ division. She won the state championship last year, and on Saturday repeated the feat, concluding an undefeated season. Some in the audience at the match were clearly not pleased. (Star-Telegram)

Mack Beggs has captured his second straight state wrestling title.

And once again his state gold medal ceremony included a mix of cheers and jeers from the crowd.

On Saturday at the Berry Center in Cypress, Texas, the transgender male wrestler capped a perfect 36-0 season by claiming his second straight UIL girls Class 6A state title in the 110-pound weight class by decision, 15-3, against Chelsea Sanchez of Katy Morton Ranch High School.

The video from the event is available at the Star-Telegram link above.

Jeff Flake In New Hampshire: I’m An Endangered Species Of Conservative; “Americanus Never-Trumpus, Subgenus RINO”

by Tim Rains at realclearpolitics:

“Republican Jeff Flake delivered a speech Thursday at the annual ‘Politics and Eggs’ event at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. Flake said that during the administration of President Donald Trump, conservatives were an endangered species and the Republican Party had surrendered to a “propaganda-fueled dystopian view.”

“I stand before you today the rarest of species,” the retiring moderate Republican said at the start of his speech. “The American Conservative.”

“Americanus Never-Trumpus, subgenus RINO,” he joked. “There is a scurrilous rumor afoot that we’re not only rare but endangered. I don’t believe it!”

“But seriously, when the putatively conservative party loses its grasp on the meaning of basic terms –basically, the word conservative– that could just be a sign we’ve taken a wrong turn,” he said. “Say, hypothetically in 2018 we have a libertine budget-busting president who exudes chaos and dotes on authoritarians, who has replaced the State Dept. with Twitter, lives in a golden palace when he’s not at the White House, and he’s the conservative… And I’m the RINO.”

“The amazing thing is that in Washington right now, among people in my party, when you hear those two comparative profiles, people will say… yeah what’s the problem? It is like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. What have we done with all the conservatives?”

“In seriousness though, we have a long road to recover as a party.”

Later, he said: “There is nothing that will be more vital then to expunge from the American record then this frenzied attack on the truth. There are few jobs that will be more difficult than putting that particular horseback in the barn. Such is the power of the president to either build or destroy. And the irony should not escape us here that someone whose name became known to us as a builder would have such a pension for destruction.”

“What does it say about conservatives that our message is so different than the words that my parents thought me, so different as to amount to a rejection of the optimistic vision of Ronald Reagan, the extraordinary decency of George H. W. Bush, the principled constitutionalism of Barry Goldwater? What does it say that we have succumbed to what can only be described as a propaganda-fueled dystopian view of conservatism?” he asked.

TRUMP RIPS MUELLER INVESTIGATION. HE’S RIGHT.

As the House Intelligence Committee has concluded, there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump Campaign. As many are now finding out, however, there was tremendous leaking, lying and corruption at the highest levels of the FBI, Justice & State. #DrainTheSwamp

The Fake News is beside themselves that McCabe was caught, called out and fired. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars was given to wife’s campaign by Crooked H friend, Terry M, who was also under investigation? How many lies? How many leaks? Comey knew it all, and much more.

The Fake News is beside themselves that McCabe was caught, called out and fired. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars was given to wife’s campaign by Crooked H friend, Terry M, who was also under investigation? How many lies? How many leaks? Comey knew it all, and much more!

The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime. It was based on fraudulent activities and a Fake Dossier paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC, and improperly used in FISA COURT for surveillance of my campaign. WITCH HUNT!

He’s right. As we and many others have pointed out many times, there is no proper predicate for Mueller’s purported investigation. There was never a crime in the first place. Mueller was improperly given a general mandate to poke around and see if he could find someone to indict, for anything, or worse yet, trick someone into committing an indictable offense. The Mueller investigation is a final insult to the rule of law that was bequeathed to us, in effect, by the outgoing, corrupt Obama administration.

If anything needs to be investigated, it is the multiple crimes and improper actions of the the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, including but not limited to their collusion with Russians to sway the 2016 presidential election–an effort that, happily, failed.

If Mueller had any integrity, he would announce that his team of rabid pro-Democrat partisans has not been able to find a hint of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia–which was the point of his investigation, to the extent that it had any coherent basis–and shut his investigation down. He won’t do that, of course. The time has not yet come to fire Mueller, perhaps, but the president is right to call him out.

FBI agent Peter Strzock and his mistress, Lisa Page, both of whom faced scrutiny for their unethical and possibly illegal behavior while doing everything in their power to prevent Donald Trump from being elected president, now face even more scrutiny for text messages they allegedly sent to each other about what appears to be intent to collude with a federal surveillance judge.

Text messages obtained by the Federalist and earlier reported by Townhall’s Matt Vespa show Strzock and Page’s disturbing back and forth, in which they discussed plans for a “cocktail party” with multiple people to help “cover” their interactions with FISA judge Rudolph Contreras.

Contreras was the FISA judge who presided over former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn’s case. You’ll remember that, before Trump became president, the Obama administration obtained a FISA order for communications from foreign actors that incidentally included Flynn.

On July 25, 2016, Page texted Strzock: “Rudy is on the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court]! Did you know that? Just appointed two months ago.”

Strzock replied to the text by saying, “I did. I need to get together with him.”

“[He] said he’d gotten on a month or two ago at a graduation party we were both at,” Page wrote.

Later, the two discussed arrangements in which to meet the judge to “cover for action.”

“[REDACTED] suggested a social setting with others would probably be better than a one on one meeting,” Strzok texted Page.

“I’m sorry, I’m just going to have to invite you to that cocktail party,” Page replied.

“Have to come up with some other work people cover for action,” Strzok wrote back.

These most recently uncovered text messages add more credence to the narrative that some within the FBI colluded against Trump and his campaign. Keep in mind this happened on the backdrop of Trump’s oppenent, Hillary Clinton, having been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing in her controversial email investigation, despite the fact that former FBI Director James Comey admitted she sent classified information to people without the proper clearances.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media still wants you to believe there’s nothing to see here, and that the only collusion. that occurred during the 2016 presidential campaign happened between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Here’s a novel concept, though: Maybe, just maybe, both could be true.”

Why We Need the Second Amendment More than Ever

by Roger Simon at PJMedia:

While executives at Delta, United, Avis, etc. are virtue signaling as loudly as they can to assure us they want nothing to do with those supposed gun nuts in the National Rifle Association and are ending discounts (such as they were) for members of that organization, a real-world observation of what went on in the Parkland tragedy, not to mention other key contemporary events, might yield a radically different conclusion.

To wit: The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution has much to recommend it. Indeed, we may need it more than ever.

Let’s start with Parkland. It’s evident now, no matter what you think of current gun laws, that a myriad of governmental bureaucracies and police departments — from school authorities to social workers to the FBI to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office — screwed up on a level that borders on the incomprehensible. Blinded by a mutually reinforcing cocktail of political correctness and organizational stupidity and ineptitude, they were clueless about the near constant acting out of Nikolas Cruz.

He could have flown across the country in a hot air ballon, dropping buckets of blood and guts and trailing a banner reading “I’m Gonna Shoot Up a School,” and these clowns wouldn’t have done anything. When Cruz actually started shooting, they behaved like the most execrable cowards, the police hiding behind cars while students and teachers were dying. That their boss, Sheriff Scott Israel, still has his job is the most incomprehensible development of all.

Would anybody in his right mind trust these people with his own security, let alone those of his children?

Is it any surprise that when President Trump asked his CPAC audience Friday which was more important to them — the Second Amendment or tax reform — they chose the right to bear arms?

Here’s How the Democrats Plan to Impeach Trump

“Recently, the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released a memo officially stating that there is no evidence of any collusion between Donald Trump and Russian intelligence during the 2016 presidential election. Of course, you might not have heard this news if you have been punishing yourself by watching or reading any of the mainstream news. For its part, the mainstream media continues to prop up the improbable narrative that Donald Trump is a Russian agent of influence who is out to corrupt our democracy in Vladimir Putin’s name.

Not only is the mainstream media dutifully covering the ongoing Robert Mueller special investigation, but the media is also transfixed on the continuing drama that is the “porn star and the president.” While the former story of Trump being a Manchurian Candidate is, frankly, absurd, given the president’s history of skirt chasing, claims that Trump paid hush money to an adult film star he had an 11-month affair with in 2006 are entirely believable. In fact, MSNBC is insisting that Trump be charged with obstruction of justice for having paid $130,000 to the adult film star, known as “Stormy Daniels,” on the eve of his unlikely 2016 election victory.

Many of my fellow Rightists continue demanding, “Who cares?” However, we should care about what the Democrats and their cronies in the media believe. After all, a sizable portion of the country does listen to the mainstream media. More importantly, the people who run the country — the elected representatives and their advisers living in Washington, D.C. — listen to what Joe Scarborough and Jake Tapper broadcast every day. While they need us plebes to vote for them, our political leaders (particularly those in the GOP establishment) live in Washington, D.C. and therefore crave the approval of people like Chuck Todd (which will never come).

Besides, the special prosecutor’s investigation into claims of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election is weakening the Trump Administration with each day (not because there is anything to the investigation, but because the investigation itself complicates the already-herculean task of governing). Like all special investigations, former FBI director Robert Mueller’s probe is a virtually limitless inquiry into the president and his top advisers. Given that career federal prosecutors, like Mueller, are conditioned to get a conviction — any conviction — by the end of the investigation, do not doubt that Robert Mueller will find whatever he can to try to hang around the president’s neck.”

There’s something more also: Mueller is now deep-diving into the Trump Organization’s financial records (as well as Jared Kushner’s financial dealings). Should there be any impropriety — no matter how innocuous — in the Trump financial records, Mueller will have all that he needs to try to take Trump down.

Remember, Donald Trump is not — and never has been — a part of the elite, corporate political class that rules our country (the “permanent bipartisan fusion party,” as Michael Walsh calls it). No matter how much money Trump had, he could never fully be embraced as one of the elite, whether as a Democrat or a Republican. Trump’s stunning (for the elite) election to the presidency in 2016 offended every sensibility and taste of the Davoisie.

Trump was a clear threat to the Democrats because he upended their plans to finally realize James Carville’s 2009 declaration that the Democrats would rule for another 40 years. Trump’s rhetoric of draining the swamp made him an enemy of the so-called “deep state” which operates Washington, D.C. Moreover, Trump — and the people who voted for Trump — threatened the little fiefdom that the Bill Kristols, David Brookses, and Mitch McConnells of the GOP had in Washington, D.C. and New York. Like Caesar, Trump is “surrounded by enemies, and something is underway, but it has no face, yet everybody in the loop knows.”

The continual prospect of Mueller recommending impeachment for President Trump is aligning nicely with the 2018 midterms. If the 2018 midterms were happening under normal circumstances, it is likely that the Republicans would have little concern. Think about it: from a policy standpoint, President Trump has been the most effective Republican president since Ronald Reagan. Yet, these are anything but normal circumstances.

While I continue to believe that the House Republicans will fare well in the 2018 midterms, the fact of the matter is that the Democrats just need two seats to retake control of the Senate. With that majority, a Democratic-led Senate can further complicate the Trump Administration’s ability to govern by drowning it in more inquiries and investigations. As we’ve seen in the last two years of American politics, anything can happen. It’s conceivable that the Democrats could achieve this two-seat victory in the Senate (especially with their base as riled up as it has been). On the House side, the Democrats have a more difficult challenge: they need to win 21 of the 24 contested House seats in 2018. If they can accomplish that task, the Democrats will have a majority. Even without capturing the House, should they win the Senate back, the Democrats can further damage Trump heading into 2020.

Should Mueller find some financial impropriety, or should he determine that Trump obstructed justice with his $130,000 payout to Stormy Daniels, Mueller can recommend impeachment. Even if the Democrats are unable to flip the House, it is likely that Trump’s enemies in the Republican Party establishment will smell weakness, and take advantage. The Democrats would probably call for impeachment, but it would be the establishment Republicans who ultimately allowed for Trump’s takedown. This would be key because impeachment is not a legal process. Rather, it is a political one.

And, just like that, the old, tired, political narrative would be restored: the “true” conservatives, as led by Pence, would be facing a younger, resurgent Democratic candidate — like Julián Castro — and permanent Democratic Party control would be affirmed. Meanwhile, the Republican establishment’s members-only fiefdom would be secured. It’s a win-win for everyone in Washington. Meanwhile, we, the people get hosed.

The 2018 midterm election is the most important election of this century. It could quite seriously determine the fate of Trump’s presidency and the course of American history. The vipers in Washington are slithering forward, hoping for any excuse to expel Trump from the White House, and return things to the way they used to be. The GOP and President Trump need to fight for each and every seat in 2018, lest the Democrats do a complete end-run around the Right, and ensure that the United States becomes just another banana republic, with one-party rule; sham democracy; and oodles of debt. If the GOP can keep its majorities in 2018, then the Right can continue its much-needed counterrevolution against the radical Left.